No more live baseball today, so I'm checking in on the playoff run of the Minnesota Wild.

Exploring the use of free music services with Alexa. Linking Alexa skills to external providers now requires Android 12, and my phone is stuck at Android 11. I've been considering a new phone.

Ordering a new phone. The 2024 version of my current phone is $130. I got an Amazon Renewed one for $72. It's got a 90-day return policy, so the lack of warranty is not a big deal.

Adjusting to my anti-nausea medication.

Boru

Buying shit. Corsair had refurbished RM1000x power supplies on sale for $70. They come with only a 90-day warranty, but given the quality of the power supply, I can live with that. It's for my test bench anyway.

I pulled the CPU and had a look at the suspect socket pin with a hand magnifying glass. The pin isn't "bent over" as they say, it's just slightly out of true relative to the other pins. It's maybe a fraction of a millimeter to the side of where it should be. I'm going to buy an inexpensive Intel graphics card and run that for a while before I put my good graphics card in. I'm waiting on a warranty claim with Crucial, so I'm in a holding pattern anyway. I'm thinking an Arc A750 would do fine for most things. It's 4K, but it's mostly 2D and low res stuff like JRPGs and older emulated games.

I wish I could think of a better way to lower and raise CPUs from the socket that didn't rely on my poor dexterity.

I had worked out a verbal agreement with my boss to stay until the end of the month for an orderly knowledge transfer, and in turn I'd get a bonus for my trouble, about two weeks salary. Well, the sent me the agreement today and are two appendices of restrictive covenants they smuggled in including a positively odious non compete agreement that forbids me from working in the industry sector my expertise is in, anywhere we do business, which is essentially world wide.

I ain't signing that, not for the peanuts they offered. ESPECIALLY considering I'm positive Legal is responsible for putting that in there, and they're already on my list of unfavorite people. It's almost insulting - they have zero leverage here, I could ghost them today and it wouldn't make a meaningful difference in my life.

I originally gave my notice for the 15th and it looks like that date is back on.

For now. Boss messaged me "let's talk tomorrow". OK, boss.

(May 6, 2026 at 12:12 am)Jackalope Wrote: I had worked out a verbal agreement with my boss to stay until the end of the month for an orderly knowledge transfer, and in turn I'd get a bonus for my trouble, about two weeks salary.  Well, the sent me the agreement today and are two appendices of restrictive covenants they smuggled in including a positively odious non compete agreement that forbids me from working in the industry sector my expertise is in, anywhere we do business, which is essentially world wide.

I ain't signing that, not for the peanuts they offered.  ESPECIALLY considering I'm positive Legal is responsible for putting that in there, and they're already on my list of unfavorite people.  It's almost insulting - they have zero leverage here, I could ghost them today and it wouldn't make a meaningful difference in my life.

I originally gave my notice for the 15th and it looks like that date is back on.

For now.  Boss messaged me "let's talk tomorrow".  OK, boss.

Good on you for that. When I was at university, I took a very basic required course called something like 'Consumer Awareness'. On day one, the professor told us, 'If you take anything away from this course, it's to read EVERYTHING before you sign ANYTHING because fine print is the enemy.'

Boru

Power on testing of a new motherboard. Everything looks good. The CPU heatsink was pulled from an old system and needs the dust knocked off it before it's installed. I realized that the power supply that I just ordered wasn't actually needed. I had forgotten about the power supply in the case that housed my previous testing system. Oh well. It was a good buy and I can always sell one of them. The new power supply is ATX 3.0 and comes with the cable for newer graphics cards. Maybe I'll just keep an extra PSU on hand. I need another motherboard test tray. I'm getting tired of constantly swapping motherboards in the current second tray because I don't have enough trays.

Checking the boot sequence on the new motherboard. It's a little hinky, but it works. This is a super cheap motherboard.